


Marionette

by DachOsmin



Series: Standalones in which Cassian Andor Has A Bad Time [5]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Dom/sub, Drugged Sex, Glove Kink, M/M, Praise Kink, Rape to Avoid Breaking Cover, Sadism, Undercover Missions, Voyeurism, Whipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-25 05:15:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22490650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DachOsmin/pseuds/DachOsmin
Summary: On a mission, Cassian bargains for his life with his body while Draven listens in.
Relationships: Cassian Andor/Davits Draven, Cassian Andor/Original Character(s)
Series: Standalones in which Cassian Andor Has A Bad Time [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1775749
Comments: 15
Kudos: 61
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	Marionette

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rubynye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubynye/gifts).



It starts out simply enough: Cassian skulking through the private quarters of an Imperial admiral, looking for secrets.

Normally Cassian would do this the civilized way, through the combined might of Draven’s best hackers. Except Admiral Nicander is paranoid enough that he distrusts the imperial network and high enough in the imperial ranks that he can afford to indulge his paranoia. He writes his secrets down on paper, like some kind of archaic villain of days past. It must cost a bloody fortune.

But of course paper can’t be hacked, and so it falls to Cassian to infiltrate Nicander’s star destroyer in an imperial captain’s uniform, break into Nicander’s rooms, and flip through each of the pages in Nicander’s journal, one by one.

Draven’s in his ear through a comm chip, and in his eyes through an ocular implant. Cassian isn’t authorized to know what is or isn’t important. He just stares at the pages until Draven’s voice hisses through the static and tells him to turn to the next one. It’s slow going, but Cassian knows better than to complain. He lets himself float in the space between terror and boredom, hyper aware of any sounds coming from the corridor outside Nicander’s quarters.

At last, a shift in Draven’s breathing alerts him to the fact that they’ve found what they were looking for, whatever it was. Nothing on the page stands out as particularly noteworthy; it’s just a series of server requisitions for an installation on Scarif- but then again, Draven has access to plenty of information he doesn’t. Cassian lets the journal fall shut.

“Make for the transports,” Draven murmurs.

Cassian nods before he remembers Draven can’t see him. “Acknowledged,” he adds, and heads for the door.

“You’re in bay forty-seven, last ship on the left.”

Cassian exits Admiral Nicander’s quarters and keys the door shut behind him. “Is the flight chart preloaded, or should I-“

It’s not a conversation they finish, because roughly five seconds into the extraction directions Admiral Tolos Nicander is stepping around the corner, eyes widening as he sees Cassian skulking next to his door.

Three things happen more or less simultaneously. First, Nicander opens his mouth to call out a challenge. Second, Cassian’s hand strays towards the grip of his holstered blaster. And third, Draven’s voice is an urgent hiss in his ear: “do not kill him.”

Cassian stops reaching for his blaster.

It is what it is. no hard feelings. It’s Draven’s job to make these calculations, and today, for whatever reason, Nicander’s life outweighs his own.

Hell, the rebels might even send someone for him, once Nicander has subdued him and trundled him down into the bowels of Imperial Intelligence for a nice long chat. Of course, whoever gets sent will be as likely to put a bullet in his brain to keep him quiet as they are to rescue him. More likely, probably; Cassian doesn’t have many illusions about his own worth. When a tool is no longer useful you throw it away.

Still, he wonders if Draven will miss him. If Draven would allow himself that, even.

He wonders why he cares.

But all this comes later, when there’s time to think and worry and chase his worries into knots.

In the moment, when Nicander has just caught him, all he feels is a jarring sense like a gravity drive failing paired with the realization that he’s on his own.

Nicander’s brow is well and truly furrowed now. “Can I help you?” he asks, with an edge that belies he’s a parsec away from raising the alarm.

Cassian makes a decision. He bites his lip and stares at the floor like he’s too nervous to meet Nicander’s eyes. There are no mirrors or windows in the hallway, but he knows exactly what he looks like, and he knows exactly what effect this has drunken pilots in the cantina. He lets his voice go higher, younger. “Actually, I came looking for you, sir. I’m an… admirer of your work.”

From his earpiece, a sharply drawn breath.

“Really,” Nicander says with an elegantly arched eyebrow. There’s skepticism there, but at least he isn’t calling in backup. “An admirer.”

Cassian lets out a nervous laugh. “I read your dissertation while I was at the academy. The one on…”

“Axial thrustors,” Draven hisses in his ear, with an edge that says they’ll definitely be talking about this when Cassian gets back.

“…axial thrustors,” Cassian says. Draven can choke. If he didn’t want Cassian doing this he should have let him shoot Nicander in the first place.

Nicander offers him a bemused smile. “You’re a recent graduate then?”

“A few years ago, sir,” Cassian says, bobbing his head. “And then when I saw you were stationed here I thought, maybe…”

“Well,” Nicander says after a short pause. He walks over and keys his code into the door to his rooms. “I’m always happy to talk about my work. Please, come in.”

Cassian follows him inside, heart pounding in his throat.

As the door whirrs shut behind him, Nicander gestures towards the two chairs in the receiving room, across the hall from the study where Cassian just finished ransacking his notebooks. “Please, sit.”

Cassian sits and looks around like he’s never been here before. Nicander is high up enough in the Imperial pecking order that he’s allowed to decorate his quarters. His tastes don’t diverge much from the standard Imperial décor-- everything is charcoal gray or black-- but he has a weakness for luxurious materials and fine things. The chairs are upholstered in real leather, smooth like butter. It feels cold when Cassian presses his clammy palms against it.

“Can I get you a drink?” Nicander asks, walking over to the sideboard laden with an assortment of glassware.

“Oh no sir, I wouldn’t want to impose-“

“Nonsense,” Nicander says with a chuckle. He selects a decanter and pours the amber liquid into two shot glasses. “What’s the point of good liquor is you can’t share it?”

“I… I wouldn’t know, sir.”

Nicander laughs, and lets his fingers touch Cassian’s as he hands him the glass. The leather of his gloves is cool against Cassian’s knuckles.

“To the Empire,” Nicander says with a crooked smile.

“To the Empire,” Cassian murmurs, and tosses back the shot. The liquor hardly burns as it goes down: Nicander can afford the good stuff. A drop clings to his lips; without thinking he licks it away. When he looks up, he realizes Nicander is staring.

Nicander shakes his head, as if pushing a thought away. “So,” he says, “tell me about your own thesis.”

Cassian blinks. Thesis. Right. “It was on special force deployment,” he hedges, and promptly gets to work spinning shit on the subject. Cassian has actually studied special force deployment, of course: how to make soldiers and take them apart, how to make a man kill and die for a cause and think it was his own idea in the first place. He knows the theory from various academic holos on the subject, and the application from harsh lessons learned at Draven’s hands.

He doesn’t talk about any of that. He just talks about the thrustors and the phasers, like he’s one of those bright-eyed idiots that’s convinced battles always come down to who’s got the best tech. Here and there Draven whispers a quiet statistic or conclusion when he’s casting about for one, but mostly it’s only the raspy sound of his voice to break up the silence of the room.

Nicander watches him with a small smile. His eyes are hungry. He doesn’t blink as often as he should. When Cassian finishes describing the thesis he’s just made up on the spot, Nicander pours him a second shot without being asked.

Cassian knocks it back numbly. The liquor burns this time; as he blinks away the watering in his eyes he can feel the warmth spreading down his throat and into his stomach.

Nicander takes a sip from his own glass. The drink is lighter in color than Cassian’s was. Of course. He’s drinking water.

Cassian needs to get out of here. He starts to stand, stumbling slightly when the room spins. What had it been: spice, or a tranq? Was it in the first drink, or the second? It doesn’t matter. The result is the same. “It’s almost curfew. My commander-“

Nicander cuts him off, reaching over to lay a warm hand on his shoulder. He presses down slightly: not forcefully, just hard enough that Cassian can feel his strength in potential, and the warning bundled with it. “Not to worry,” he says. “I’ll write you a pass.”

Cassian swallows and collapses back into the chair. “Of course, sir.”

“You’re a remarkable young man,” Nicander says with a gleam in his eye. There’s suddenly a hand on his knee, and then Nicander’s fingers are splaying wide, and his index finger is tracing the inseam of Cassian’s uniform higher, higher, higher…

Cassian squirms in place, casting his eyes about the room for something else to look at-

-and across the hallway in Nicander’s study, he sees the papers he was looking at earlier, strewn across Nicander’s desk.

He’d fucked up. He’d forgotten to put them back in order. In his ear, Draven swears quietly. “Sloppy, Andor.”

He feels the words like a punch to the gut. It’s stupid that Draven’s censure should hit him the way it does, considering he has bigger things to worry about. If Nicander turns, he’s going to see the papers. If he sees the papers, Cassian is as good as dead.

He’s staring, and Nicander is frowning and beginning to turn, and Cassian is frozen in place-

“Kiss him,” Draven hisses.

He’s so used to obeying Draven’s orders that he doesn’t think; he just moves. He presses himself forward, angling into the space between Nicander’s arms, laying his lips at the harsh corner of the man’s mouth and hoping for the best.

Nicander betrays no surprise; he accepts the kiss and takes it further, pressing back forcefully with his lips as he brings one hand up to cradle the back of Cassian’s neck and twists the other through the hair at the nape of his neck. His grip is just tight enough to be painful, but at least he’s not looking at his study anymore.

Nicander kisses like an invading army: he pries Cassian’s lips open with his tongue and plunders his mouth. There’s no sloppiness in him, just a kind of methodical ruthlessness. And maybe it’s the alcohol, maybe it’s the drugs, but Cassian can’t help the whimper that falls from his lips when Nicander breaks the kiss.

In his ear, Draven’s breathing is harsh.

“Oh, you are lovely,” Nicander murmurs, reaching out to caress the plane of Cassian’s cheek. Nicander’s gloved fingers are soft against his skin. “So, so lovely.”

Cassian’s eyes flutter shut in resignation, and he lets himself sway forward, leaning into Nicander’s touch. This will happen. It’s happened before. It will happen again. There’s no fighting it. He should be grateful. There are worse things.

But suddenly, Nicander is grabbing his chin, fingers pressing down hard enough to bruise. “But I’m not a fool.”

An icy feeling fights its way through the haze of the alcohol. Cassian’s stomach flips. “Sir?”

Nicander presses his thumb down hard on Cassian’s lower lip, smears spit across his cheek. “You didn’t come here to talk about axial thrustors, did you?”

In his ear, Draven quietly swears. Cassian frantically runs through everything they’ve said and done. Nicander couldn’t have seen the papers. Cassian’s been so careful, he’s been on him every second, there’s no way Nicander saw them, no way-

The slap takes him by surprise, wresting a gasp from him and sending him sprawling back against the chair. He takes a ragged breath, feeling the burn of his skin and the terror beneath it. He’s been found out. This is how it ends.

He’s vaguely aware of Nicander standing up, the muffled click of his polished boots as he steps closer, his shadow as he looms overhead. Cassian closes his eyes and waits for the cool touch of a blaster muzzle at his temple.

It doesn’t come.

Instead, there’s a dull pain in his cheek as Nicander rubs the pad of his thumb over Cassian’s cheekbone, pressing down into the smarting skin. “Do you think I’m an idiot?” he purrs. “Who sent you- Admiral Banefra or Admiral Kreaves?”

It takes a moment for Cassian to process the words but when he does, the relief washes over him like cool water. Nicander doesn’t know; Nicander thinks he’s just some pawn caught up in an imperial power play. Thank the stars, thank the stars-

Nicander grabs him by the collar and wrests him from the chair. Cassian goes limp, lets himself be shoved to the floor. The metal is hard beneath his knees. He fights away a wave of dizziness and pulls himself into a kneeling position, holding his hands out for balance. A wave of nausea crashes over him. “Steady, Andor,” Draven murmurs in his ear. Cassian almost calls out to him, but bites his tongue in time to stop himself.

“Whoever your commanding officer is, if he’s willing to send his toys into the monster’s den he’ll have to content himself to see them broken.” Nicander’s lip twists, his breathing rough. “Hands and knees.”

Cassian hesitates.

“Do what he says,” Draven whispers.

He has to do it if Draven says so; that’s how it works. How it’s always worked. His limbs are unsteady; he half-falls into the position. It’s hard to hold himself up; the room feels like it’s shifting around him.

Footsteps walking away, but Cassian knows better than to hope that Nicander’s leaving. The creak of a cabinet opening. Shuffling noises. The cabinet closing again. Footsteps. And then there’s a shriek of air and his back erupts in a blooming line of pain.

He can’t help the cry that falls from his lips. His arms go weak; he just manages to stop from falling forward.

“Where are your pretty manners from before?” Nicander pants. “Aren’t you going to thank me?”

Cassian chokes down a sob. “Thank y-“

The second strike hits him unawares. Cassian arches up, desperate to escape the pain of the vibro-whip- because that’s what it is; he recognizes the flavor of the pain.

He’s been through counter-interrogation drills a million times more painful than this. But whatever Nicander slipped in his drink has him undone, unable to examine the pain from a clinical distance like he was trained to do. His heart is pounding in his ears; he thinks he might throw up.

“Breathe, Cassian,” Draven says.

He does as he’s told. Draven can say what he likes: he’s a fuckup, he’s expendable, he’s worth no more than the intelligence he brings in: but at least he does as he’s told.

“Now: count with me,” Draven says with the grim certainty that this is going to hurt. Once again, the vibro whip sings through the air. “One.”

The whip licks across his back, falling on top of where the first stroke fell. He bites down hard on his tongue and tastes the coppery tang of blood, but manages not to cry out this time. He blinks against the sudden sting of tears in his eyes.

“You’re doing fine,” Draven murmurs, and the word washes over him like a balm. “Now: two.”

The blows fall and fall and fall, and all through it Draven is in his ear. Cassian floats, adrift in the pain and the haze of the drugs, with only Draven’s voice as an anchor.

And then the blows stop. It feels like it’s been an eternity, but Draven’s only counted to twenty.

Cassian dares to take a breath, and for a moment he thinks maybe this is the end of it: Nicander’s had enough and will let him go, no harm no foul.

Stupid, really. Men like Nicander can never get enough. What they catch, they keep.

With a deep chuckle that Cassian feels in his bones, Nicander throws the vibrowhip to the floor and strides up to Cassian. With one hand he’s undoing his pants and with the other he’s pulling out his cock, already hard and ruddy. “Get to work.”

Cassian pulls himself up on his knees, biting back a moan when the motion rubs the torn fabric of his jacket against the whip marks. He sways forward to plant a clumsy open-mouthed kiss to the side of Nicander’s cock. He’s perversely gratified when Nicander swears quietly at the touch of his tongue. If he can be good, Nicander won’t hurt him anymore. If he does a good job, he’ll survive this.

He lets saliva gather on his tongue, laves his mouth down Nicander’s length. The bitter taste is a kind of blessing; it’s something to focus on, take his mind of the pain and terror of it all. He licks another stripe down Nicander’s length, then takes the head in his mouth and glances up at Nicander through the fall of his lashes, now clumped with tears.

“You look lovely like this.” Nicander reaches out to caress the side of Cassian’s head, but then his fingers are tangling in Cassian’s hair and yanking his head forward hard. Cassian chokes as Nicander’s cock fills his mouth, a bitter cry trapped in the back of his throat.

He’s gagging, he can’t breathe, he needs air- he panics and starts to struggle, limbs flailing, back in agony-

“Calm,” Draven hisses. “Breath through your nose.”

He tries, inhaling in shuddering gasps.

In the distance, Nicander is laughing.

“You’re going to be okay,” Draven says. “You will get through this.” There’s something off about his voice but Cassian can’t read Draven during the best of times, and this is not the best of times.

Suddenly his mouth is empty and he can breathe again, but now there’s a hand snaking under his arm and he’s being dragged to his feet. He’s half-stumbling at Nicander’s side; they pass through a door, and for a second Cassian thinks they’re in the hallway, thinks Nicander’s decided to turn him over to Imperial Intelligence after all.

“No, sir,” he slurs. “I’ll be good-“

Nicander shoves him hard and he crumples, falls on his back onto a bed. The pain in his back is incandescent: it takes over all of his nerve endings and he shrieks, body wracked like a drawn bow as the pain swamps him.

There are hands undoing his belt, hands yanking his pants off and parting his legs.

Cassian could fight back- but Draven doesn’t want him to, Draven said that Nicander has to live, Draven says he has to go along with this.

The next thing he feels is the blunt head of Nicander’s gloved index finger, pressing its way in as Cassian shudders and clenches around it.

“Please, sir,” he says, and fuck, he’s crying now. “I can’t.”

“You can,” Draven says.

“I don’t care,” Nicander says, and fucks another finger into him. The leather goes in smooth, at least, like butter. He scissors his fingers once, twice, and then he’s pulling them out. Before Cassian can take a shaky breath of relief, he’s lining the blunt head of his cock up.

Nicander breeches him with a grunt, and oh, it’s too much, too big, too fast, and Cassian is crying in earnest now, the salt stinging his lips. “I can’t,” he pants again, more out of habit than of any hope that either Draven or Nicander will take mercy on him.

“You were trained for this,” Draven says.

“You were made for this, Nicander says, and pushes inexorably in.

The intrusion seems to have no end, in and in and in he presses, and Cassian can do nothing but take it, and take it, and take it. Nicander bottoms out with a grunt, and Cassian has a moment to dwell on the horror of the fullness, the burn and the stretch, the way he feels branded from the inside out, before Nicander withdraws, only to slide back in, impaling him inch by inch.

He tosses his head against the pillows, tears his fingers at the sheets. What he wants is to get away, to push Nicander off and run, or curl into a ball and wait for everything around him to stop. But he can’t, he isn’t allowed to, and so he squirms in place, and pants, and clenches his eyes shut like he can block out the worst of the sensations.

The slap is lazy this time, indolent. Cassian hisses at the sting of it. “Look at me when I’m fucking you.”

“Yes, sir.” Stars, but his voice sounds wrong in his ears: hollow and shaky and haunted.

Nicander’s lips curl in a smile. His grip tightens on Cassian’s hips, his gloved fingers pressing cruelly into the flesh, hard enough that it feels like he’s branding his fingerprints onto the bones beneath. He snaps his hips forward again, driving himself deep, and this time Cassian can’t help but keen at the twin spikes of pain and dark heat that twist through him.

Because that’s the worst part: his own cock, traitor that it is, is responding. No, that’s not the worst. The worst part is that Draven is listening to all of this, seeing him shaken, seeing him _weak._

As if reading his mind, Draven’s voice is soft in his ear. “You can do this.” His voice seems rougher, the pitch is wrong.

If Draven says it, it must be true. Cassian clings to the thought like a drowning man.

Above him, Nicander chuckles. “You wanted this. Bet you touch yourself in your barracks, thinking about taking the cocks of your betters.”

Nicander picks up speed then, sets a brisk pace, snapping his hips with the implacable rhythm of a semiautomatic blaster. His hands dance over Cassian, now pinching cruelly at his nipple, now smearing the blood from his broken lip like paint across his cheek, now tucking a curl of hair behind his ear in a parody of affection.

“You were looking forward to this, weren’t you?” he growls. “I could tell from the moment I saw you in the hallway, that you were hoping to get my cock in you.” His gloved hand curls around Cassian’s cock, now shamefully hard, swiping the flat of his thumb through the bead of precum gathering at the tip.

Cassian shudders at the awful betrayal of it, forces himself to watch as Nicander smears trails of precum over the planes of Cassian’s sweat-damp stomach.

“You were made for this,” Nicander says.

“You’re doing so well,” Draven whispers.

Nicander’s strokes become sloppier, and the hand jacking his cock tighter, crueler. The sensations become too much: from the agony in his back to the spinning in his head to the burn in his ass to the pleasure in his cock, it’s overwhelming. All he can do is lie there and take it, a whimpering, twitching mess. And through it all are the twin murmurs of Draven and Nicander, blurring and blending, overlaying each other, inexorable and endless.

“-a filthy little slut-”

“-doing good, so good-“

“made to be filled with cock, made for it, _stars-_ “

“ _-Stars,_ Cassian-“

“-whore-“

“-good boy-“

The orgasm rips through him like a planet breaking apart.

***

He drifts, and when he wakes Nicander is asleep on the bed next to him.

He gives himself a moment to feel the room stop spinning, and then he’s staggering to his feet and limping from the bedroom to the study. He tidies up the sheaf of papers with shaking hands, puts them back in place. And then he stands there, staring at nothing, the only sound his own raspy breath and Nicander’s snores from the other room.

“There’s a transport waiting,” Draven says quietly.

“Acknowledged.” His voice sounds like it belongs to someone else.

“That was… you did very well.” Draven’s voice is stiff and stilted in his ear, with none of the softness or kindness from before.

Cassian doesn’t reply. Instead, he slips from Nicander’s rooms and makes his way to the hanger bay.

He locates the ship, keys in the codes Draven murmurs in his ear, boards. Heads to the cockpit, sets the destination Draven gives him. Waits for the ship to clear the Destroyer’s perimeter and make the jump to hyperspace. In his ear, Draven lets out a short breath. “Cassian-“

He plucks the comm link from his ear. Stares at it a moment. Drops it to the ground.

Smashes it beneath his heel.


End file.
